UNC-Miami: Locker Room Report

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – North Carolina dropped its fourth game in its last seven outings after blowing an 11-point lead in the second half of a 64-61 overtime loss to Miami on Saturday night.

Here is what the tar Heels had to say about their fourth loss of the season against eight wins.

Rashad McCants

On why the offense went into a tailspin that saw no field goals over the final 11:10 and none form the starters over the final 16:31

They just slowed the game down and we didn't really get great looks and we really just didn't hit big shots. I missed a couple of layups. Little things lost this game.

On maybe wanting the clock to go faster effected their play

Not really. I think we wanted to just pound them into the ground. As far as the 18-0 run, we wanted to run away with it. And then we just slowed it down, and as we slowed it down (we) kind of broke down on defense.

On the preference of running

Everybody does. That's just our team's game. We're fast and we can get up and down, and they of just slowed us down.

On whom "they" is when saying "they" slowed it down

Miami.

David Noel

On the contact on his jumper with 31 seconds left in overtime

Yeah, it was real hard. I came down from the shot and my head hit his eye, and it hurt.

On if the shot was by design

Yeah it was. It was out of the timeout and inbounds.

On the field goal drought

We got open looks all night, but we just weren't knocking them down.

On pulling things back some after the 18-0 run

Sometimes we seem to do that. We play at a quick pace and then when we try to slow it down things just don't work out our way. I think we need to play at a quick pace for our team to be effective on the floor.

On being effective in the zone in the second half, which helped ignite the run

We felt real good about he zone. We watched film on them and knew their big men were great outside shooters, so we tried to collapse the zone in and keep them on the inside. And when they got it out we just pressured them a lot.

Jawad Williams

On the disappointing loss

We just have to bounce back. It's (the loss) disappointing, but to be a good team we just have to bounce back.

On the stretch without a field goal

We just took some bad shots, rushed some, and put more pressure on ourselves. They did a good job. They were switching defenses on us. But more so I think we missed shots because we didn't shoot the ball that well tonight. And that's about it.

On UNC's inability to put teams away

It comes with maturity. As we get older we will realize what it takes to bury a team. We will just have to learn through game experience.

On shooting 31 percent from the field as a team despite grabbing 21 offensive rebounds

That just shows what type of team we can be, but tonight wasn't completely like that because we struggled shooting the ball.

On playing Davidson next week

They humiliated us pretty much last year. I'm looking forward to playing this game. I think we all are.

Raymond Felton

On missing the front end of a one and one free throw with 53 seconds left in regulation

I was upset with myself and am still upset about the situation, I should have hit those free throws. It should never have gone into overtime had I hit those free throws.

On if slowing it down is why the offense went into the tank

Nah, I'm not going to blame it on that.

On if the crowd affected Carolina late in the game

No it didn't affect us. We've got to be used to that. We've played a couple of away games with crowds yelling at us, calling us names and stuff. We just got to play through things like that.

Senior writer Andrew Jones is in his seventh year with Inside Carolina. He hosts a late afternoon radio show on ESPN Radio, WMFD AM630 in Wilmington and can be reached via e-mail at: AndrewJones@AM630.net.